{"id":246968,"date":"2026-06-10T07:30:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T11:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=246968"},"modified":"2026-06-12T12:33:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T16:33:48","slug":"celebrating-mothers-and-fathers-but-who-cares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/06\/celebrating-mothers-and-fathers-but-who-cares\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Mothers and Fathers, but Who Cares?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Kim Price-Glynn was a new mother, she found herself in a not-so-unique situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a lot of people who could care about<\/em> my kids, but I had no one locally who could care for<\/em> my kids,\u201d she says. \u201cMy extended family is far-flung, so my husband and I had to create our own network of care from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n

She joined La Leche League and the local MOMS Club chapter. Later came membership in a babysitting co-op and the school PTO. Each group allowed her to forge friendships, gain access to resources, and find a place to commiserate and celebrate parenting highs and lows.<\/p>\n

But they also offered professional direction.<\/p>\n

\"A
Kim Price-Glynn, an associate professor of sociology, studies care work and recently looked at the organizations that parents turn to when they themselves need care. (Contributed photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An associate professor in UConn\u2019s sociology department<\/a>, Price-Glynn studies care work and considered her own experiences when beginning to look at the organizations that parents turn to when they themselves need care.<\/p>\n

Take that babysitting co-op, for instance.<\/p>\n

It included members recruited by neighbors and from personal networks to create a hand-picked group of mostly moms to trade caring for each other\u2019s children in a pinch or need of a night out. Price-Glynn says it was a \u201clifeline\u201d for her when the kids were little.<\/p>\n

But because it was by invitation only, it was exclusionary by nature, and that exclusivity, through its very structure, she says, inadvertently bolsters the proverbial stereotype of parental cliquishness and, in return, diminishes the importance of the group\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a sociologist, I was fascinated by the ways that these groups both provide possibilities to address and transform inequalities and also reproduce and exacerbate them. I learned a lot about caregiving and about the strengths and relative weaknesses of these groups,\u201d she says of the research conducted for her latest book, \u201cWho Cares About Parents? Temporary Alliances, Exclusionary Practices, and the Strategic Possibilities of Parenting Groups.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThese groups provide a lot of service, and focusing on this kind of mid-level, or organizational level, care infrastructure is important because we tend to focus on families and individual care,\u201d she says. \u201cWe think about government and state care. We think about private, expensive paid care, but we don\u2019t always look around at what\u2019s right in front of us in our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women Take on Most of the Caregiving<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Just before Mother\u2019s Day in May, Price-Glynn says she was reflecting on motherhood in general and drifted in thought to the mountain of research that\u2019s found most of the caregiving responsibility \u2013 whether for children or aging parents \u2013 falls to women.<\/p>\n

They tend to be the ones who make summer camp arrangements, schedule flu shots and physicals, and notice the need for a new pair of sneakers or haircut.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very gendered,\u201d she says of caregiving. \u201cWomen do the bulk of the caregiving, both paid and unpaid, and they are struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pandemic a handful of years ago put parents and children in the same space for extended periods, with moms and dads taking on even more concentrated roles of teacher, coach, and playmate, Price-Glynn says, evermore raising the need to talk about things like parental burnout and respite.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t even call it respite care when we give it to parents, right? We don\u2019t even think about it that way,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s a long list of needs that parents have. They need connections, support, and camaraderie. They need affordable child and eldercare, access to respite care, health benefits, paid family leave, and flexible workplaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parent organizations like a school PTA might be where one turns to have some of their needs met, if only because a parent group knows how to get things done, she says. Movie nights, back to school cookouts, book fairs, and spring fundraisers just seem to happen and offer events at which parents can connect, meeting some of their need for camaraderie and respite.<\/p>\n

Parenting groups also provide outreach, education, in-kind resources, financial support, and advocacy, she notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are exciting and progressive things happening in these parent groups that you might not expect,\u201d Price-Glynn says. \u201cThey are transforming in really interesting ways to expand resources for parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, in some ways they\u2019ve stayed in character.<\/p>\n

Men Say They\u2019d be Suspicious of Other Men<\/strong><\/h3>\n

With Father\u2019s Day next on the calendar, Price-Glynn says that her recent research also focused on a group of dads who were deeply involved in their children\u2019s care.<\/p>\n

First, she asked the fathers in a babysitting co-op \u2013 who, even they admitted, participated only by proxy through the efforts of the mothers, their wives \u2013 whether they would be OK with another dad in the group caring for their child.<\/p>\n

Overwhelmingly, they said that would not be copasetic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t see men as reliable caregivers,\u201d she says. \u201cThey were really suspicious of men who wanted to provide care.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was discouraging, but since those surveyed belonged to the parent group only through a partner and not on their own initiative, she wondered how the response might be different from a parent group geared specifically to dads.<\/p>\n

Price-Glynn next talked with members of City Dads Groups on the East and West coasts and in the Midwest and asked the same question: Would they approve of someone in their dad\u2019s group watching their kids?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to set up the question. I wasn\u2019t asking them about whether they\u2019d be OK pulling a man off the street and having him watch their kids,\u201d she says. \u201cI was asking them about people they know, people they socialize with.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I got the same halting hesitation from those men. It was really troubling to me,\u201d she continues. \u201cWe have such deeply ingrained, gendered ideas about caregiving, and bringing men into care is going to be a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The men she interviewed said they\u2019d be skeptical of any man who was interested in caregiving and saw them as potentially harmful to children, she says, emphasizing that was the prevailing view from a group of men positioned to think otherwise.<\/p>\n

They even paused when asked whether they\u2019d hire a boy as a babysitter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot we need to do to change that,\u201d she says. \u201cWe need to raise boys to consider caregiving as part and parcel of what they do and who they are, and we need to figure out a way to bring that through their life course. Certainly, there needs to be policy change, but also day-to-day we need to make caregiving more accessible to men and change how we understand masculinity and care work.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all, she notes, everyone at some point needs care.<\/p>\n

\u201cCaregiving is just the cornerstone of a good and just society,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s no higher calling than trying to build a society in which caregiving is recognized, supported, and understood because so much good flows from there. It reverberates, and our basic humanity depends on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only then would there be more than enough people to care for<\/em> \u2013 and not just about<\/em> – each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn sociologist Kim Price-Glynn took a look at the organizations that parents turn to when they themselves need care<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":247003,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,1715,2460,2231,2648,2076,2235,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-246968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-community-impact","category-faculty","category-health-well-being","category-blue-research","category-research","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 15:15:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246968"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247004,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246968\/revisions\/247004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/247003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246968"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=246968"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=246968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}